Nazmul Hossain Shanta, who has been going through a bad patch for a long time, specially, in Test and T20 format since wearing the arm-bad of captaincy eight months back.
He could not do well after becoming the Tigers’ captain, his run average in Tests and T20Is was fallen, athough batted with better average in ODI. Finally decided to quit his captaincy after Bangladesh going down to South Africa in the first Test at the Mirpur Test following their white wash against India.
As a skipper, Shanto, the 26-year-old has so far captained the Tigers in nine Tests, as many ODIs and 24 T20 international matches. Under his leadership Bangaldesh won three Test including a 2-0 series win against Pakistan at their home and at the same time also won three ODIs and 10 T20Is as a captain.
Pressure of captaincy has seemingly dampened his batting in Tests and T20Is. The left-hander averages 25.76 in Tests as skipper, slightly lower than his career average of 28.68 and in T20Is, he averages 18.76 as skipper while his career average stands at 22.85.
Shanto has been leading the team in three formats since February this year and on ninth month desired to step down from leadership from all formats.
However, one of the directors of BCB said, “Shanto has not yet given any letter to BCB about his stepping down from captaincy.
Shanto announced and expressed his desire to quit the captaincy verbally but yet to convey any written to the BCB, the BCB director informed.
However, the chief executive officer of the Bangladesh Cricket Board's (BCB) Nizamuddin Chowdhury, when contacted, said that he was not informed about Shanto wanting to quit nor has he received any official letter from the captain in this regard.
But national team selector Hannan Sarkar said that he was aware of this that Shanto's plan to quit as captain from all three formats.
Meanwhile, thereafter his announcement of quiting the cantaincy, there have been so much discussion on, if Shanto would step down, who would replace him.
Mehidy Hasan Miraj, Litton Das and Tawheed Hridoy are being considered much in the discussion.
